Time Was (7 page)

She crossed back to her desk and pressed a button.

The giant photo of Joan Crawford hissed then began to slide slowly to the side, revealing something behind it.

“Don't screw with me, fellah,” said Annabelle, delighted at the way Tyler looked—as if he'd just soiled his pants.

Behind the photo of St. Joan was a two-way mirror that looked into a shabby room where a shabby little man, bald and severely overweight, wearing a torn white shirt and split trousers, sat in a chair before a wooden table.

On that table were several empty bottles of liquor.

“Recognize him?” asked Annabelle.

Tyler blanched. “My God, it's . . . I mean, I can't be sure . . . but it looks like Mr. James. We had been told that he resigned and—”

“You were told what I
wanted
you to be told. I've known for a good long while that someone on the board has been planting spies in here, and I'm sick of it. I thought perhaps James's disappearance might get my message across to them, but your presence here proves that assumption wrong—and I
hate
being wrong, Tye. You might want to keep that in mind.” She snapped her fingers and Simmons joined them at the window, holding a small radio-control keyboard in the palm of his hand.

“There's a tribe in Africa, Tye—well, what's left of it, anyway—called the Masai, and every so often they choose one of their elders, or a cripple, or some other useless member of the village, and they give them a huge party, then take them out into the jungle and leave them there for the hyenas to eat alive. It's their way of not only controlling the population but of thinning out those elements that might taint the purity of their tribal genetics.” She nodded at Simmons, and her assistant extended the silver antennae attached to the device in his hands then pressed a switch that activated a red indicator light.

“You keep an eye on your predecessor in there,” said Annabelle to Tyler. “Because right now I'm going to tell you the same thing I told him—and maybe you'll listen. This world, Tye, from pole to pole, is a jungle. Whether that jungle is composed of vines and swamps or boardrooms and contractual pen strokes, it's all the same, no different from the one where the Masai feed the hyenas. Its inhabited by various species of beasts, some that rut in caves and devour their young, others that wear tailored suits and dine on their business rivals' broken stock speculations. All of these beasts have only one honest-to-God function, and that is to
survive. There is no morality, no law, no imposed man-made dogma that will stand in the path of that survival. That humankind survives is the only morality there is. And for us to survive as a race, we must be superior, we must dominate all lesser creatures, and, in order to ensure that, it is not only vital but necessary to destroy, to eliminate, to thin out and expunge any undesirable element that threatens to stop the march of progress. Now, you're a smart young man, Tyler—I've seen your records—so I'm sure you know where this is going.”

“I don't think so.”

“Pity, because this has got one hell of a punch line.” She snapped her fingers, and Simmons pointed the antennae toward the figure of James, then pressed a button.

James dropped to the floor and began to thrash around, screaming.

“Besides the I-Bots program, Tyler, did you examine other budget records?”

“A few, but—”

“Did you happen to glance at Nano-Tech Division's records?”

“Briefly.”

“Then you know about the experiments we've been conducting with nanites.”

“I know a little about it but it's not an area that I'm . . . well, very knowledgeable in.”

Annabelle looked at her assistant. “Simmons—fill Mr. Tyler in on our most recent developments, will you? And Tye? Don't take your eyes off James in there. I like to provide a good floor show for selected employees.”

And that's when Mr. James's flesh began to smoke.

 

—and now there were bodies scattered on the ground in front of him as a result of the panic firing but Janus kept up his pace across the compound's main yard, increased it even, because nothing slowed him, nothing tired him, nothing stopped him, not even the bullets strafing down at him from the security towers. There was less gunfire now than a minute ago but that was only because they were getting ready to release the dogs. He'd expected that, and the gas, too, only someone had gotten impatient and given the order to use the bombs too soon and the yard was now impenetrable with gas clouds. Security guards were running this way and that, firing indiscriminately because they couldn't see a damned thing, and that was good, that was very good, because Janus always came prepared, he'd put on his CX–47 mask and could breathe easily, and that was really, really good—

—the sirens were getting louder, screaming like monsters, and that wasn't so good, not so good at all because it was giving him a headache, but then a guard came out of the smoke plowing off shot after shot, a second guard fired off a round and accidentally caught the other right smack in the knee, pulping it, and the guard did a flip, landed hard, tried to crawl, and Janus smiled behind his gas mask because no one crawled too damned far with a kneecap gone, so he pulled the Colt Python from out of his shoulder holster and just to be a good sport about things blew the guard's head clean off his shoulders on the way past because, after all, what was the guy going to do with the rest of his life, having a knee all shot to hell like that?—

—he rounded the last corner of the main yard and headed toward the gate that was now visible through the haze of gas and smoke and gunfire, but now there was the outline of another
guard, one stupid hero guard armed with one mother of a semiautomatic rifle and Janus charged toward him with all he had and Mr. Hero got off a couple of shots, one pretty close, one grazing Janus's shoulder, but that didn't stop him. He kept charging forward until he was close enough to make a fist of his right hand, a club of his arm, and one swing later the guard was out cold on the ground and Janus grabbed up the rifle and spun around, switching it from semi- to full-automatic, and with one squeeze of the trigger began to hose the yard behind him.

The scream of the sirens was nearly drowned out by those of the guards he was laying to their final rest on the hollow points of bullets, and now things were good again, things were very good indeed, so Janus let fly with one last burst of gunfire and ran through the gate into the snow-covered street, running, running, running along the route he planned out months ago, running toward the frozen lake and the special box of supplies he'd planted there before breaking into the compound forty-seven minutes ago—

—he could hear them spilling out of the gates behind him, firing their warning shots, the idiots, but underneath the crackle of gunfire was the snarl of the dogs, so Janus picked up his speed and flew around a corner of the lake road and lo and behold
thank'ya Jee-zus
here came a car straight toward him, and the driver saw what he was in for and hit the brakes and the car came to a shrieking, fishtailing halt in a cloud of snow and ice but Janus didn't have time to be polite or even wait to see if the driver's side door was unlocked, so he just skidded up beside the car, blew out the window and most of the driver's skull with the last bullet from the Python, tossed the body out into the snow, slammed closed the door, ripped the car into drive, and took off in a straight line right through the middle of the guards, cutting through them like a machete through foliage, clipping a couple, fender slamming two of them, then he whipped the car around, skidding for all it was worth, but the driver had been a conscientious one, yessir, because the snow tires were good ones, giving Janus traction to spare, so it was easy for him to plow through the rest of this first wave of guards and dogs, flattening several of both like pancakes before flooring the accelerator and heading on down the lake road.

Six minutes later he was deep in the woods surrounding the frozen lake, discarding his clothing and slipping into his specially modified wetsuit, inflating it, strapping on his air tank, checking the oxygen regulator, donning the underwater mask.

The boots Janus wore were specifically designed for ice divers who, rather than chance the force of changing currents, chose to walk upside down below the ice. Five-inch spikes covered the soles of each boot. Nothing short of a bomb blast could loosen their hold once they were entrenched.

Janus activated the oxygen tank, put the regulator firmly into his mouth, swung the speargun strap around his chest, secured his quiver of spears to his person, and double checked to make sure he had the disks he'd just stolen securely sealed in their protective case in his belt. His last pistol, a deadly Colt Anaconda .44 Magnum, was firmly held in a watertight holster strapped to his thigh. There were those who would probably think Janus paranoid for taking a gun underwater with him, but years of experience and wounds had taught him to take nothing for granted.

He had a gallery of scars from the rare occasions he'd forgotten that rule.

Admittedly, he'd made a few slips the last couple of years, but nothing serious, nothing he'd told anyone about. Though he knew he might be getting too old for his particular line of work, he tried with all his still-considerable might to deny it.

Even to himself.

Especially
to himself.

It was, perhaps, one of the few genuinely human foibles he possessed.

He checked his air timer: thirty minutes. More than enough time to get from here to the drying shed three-quarters of a mile down the lake.

He'd chosen this method for his getaway for several reasons, not the least of which was that he loved the peace that lay beneath the water. It would give him time to regroup after the violence at the compound—a form of decompression that was necessary to keep himself in one solid mental piece.

Aside from the ethereal quiet he found beneath the ice, Janus had chosen this method of escape because many of the roads leading in and out of the area were too bombarded with snow and ice to be traveled by any vehicle besides a snowmobile, and a snowmobile would attract too much attention.

He lowered himself down into the hole in the ice he'd cut earlier, steadied himself, then pushed back his legs as if readying for a somersault until he felt the spikes take hold.

A moment later, he was under the ice, walking across the lake upside down.

For the first fifteen minutes, his otherworldly walk was bliss. He had cut out two exit holes, in case of any trouble with the oxygen tank, but he didn't think he'd need the spare exit.

Then he heard something like a drum. As he neared his exit, the sound became louder, and irregular—not like a drum at all.

The water, so much denser than air, conducted sound as air molecules never could. As a child, Janus had liked to lie in the bathtub, his ears in the water, and hear the enormous clanks and knocks his toy boats could make as they bumped against the porcelain. It made his boats real. Now Janus heard sounds that seemed like footsteps: far away, yet all around him, the water carrying vibrations too long for air to carry. As he approached his entrance, they did not seem to grow louder from there—the water unlocalized sounds—rather, they grew louder from everywhere.

Janus stopped and stood still. Tried to listen. The sound was too confused.

Then, since he stood inverted, Janus looked “down,” as it seemed, and saw very clearly, in front of him, the footprint of a man on the ice.

One black, ripple-sole footprint. In front of him.

Another joined it—perhaps the man had raised a knee to fix a boot.

Two black bootprints. Guard's boots.

A guard from the compound was standing on the opposite side of the ice from him: right side up on the other side of the ice on which Janus stood upside down, like figures on a playing card.

Janus tried to figure out how the guard had gotten here so quickly—probably used a hover-car—then decided it didn't matter.

The guy was here now, and that didn't figure into Janus's scenario.

The ice was translucent, not transparent: Only the black boot soles pressing flat against the ice could be seen. Janus's silver air bubbles began to congeal on the ice's surface, and he stiffened, then decided they were too light for the guard to see. Janus's boots, suspended from the ice by crampon spikes, should be similarly invisible.

The man's shadow fell across the ice.

Janus flinched and looked around, then he realized he cast no shadow in his otherworld.

The black soles turned, and Janus saw the unmistakable outline of a gun fall across the ice.

It looked thin—but that could be a trick of the light; thin and long like a rifle, not a gun you'd use to hunt anything out on this ice. In winter there were only ducks and geese out on the marsh. Any hunter worth the price of his ammo would use a shotgun to hunt.

The outline turned again: Janus saw, unmistakably, the shadow of a protrusion above the barrel, thicker than the barrel, that began above the pistol grip and ran no more than a quarter of the barrel's length, where it flared out in a bell. A scope.

Only rifles had scopes. Shotguns didn't even have ordinary sights.

The bootprints started walking in front of him. Janus followed them, walking upside down beneath the man, a pace behind him.

From the way the bootprints stopped, made half-turns to each side, and from the way the shadow of the rifle swept in an arc along Janus's glowing ice, back and forth, Janus knew for certain this was a guard.

The bootprints kept on—Janus stalking the stalker. He found them moving in a curve toward some point. Every five steps the prints would stop, the long compound shadow of the rifle and scope would sweep along the ice like a shadow searchlight across a glowing sky, then the bootprints would continue. Janus gradually became sure.

His mouth twisted.